Windows OS creating network speed concerns

[HideandGeek]

Hello guys. I've been scratching my head for a few days on this. I have a pretty beefy computer (i9 9900k, 2070Super, z390 Pro Wifi, m.2's, and 16GB RAM) built in the middle of 2019. I've not really paid attention to my internet speeds until recently when I noticed network dropping issues. My ISP came out and swapped my modem (Spectrum ) and everything was "ok." I pay for 400 down and like 20 up. I still had some random issues on my PC so I bought a new router. My Nighthawk r7000 is like 5 years old so I got an ASUS RT-AX3000. The netgear had started giving me suspicions anyways. Well, on my netgear router I got about 115 down and 20 up over Wifi. I would get full speeds hardwired to the router AND to the modem. On the new router I get about 75 down and 5 up. Over the last couple days and a windows update to 20H2 I started getting about 12 up. I created a linux boot drive and over WIFI I get full speeds. 450 down and 22 up. I can boot back into windows and it's bottomed out. It's only on this PC that I'm having issues. Microsoft support is useless. I can hardwire to my modem and get great speeds. I'm kinda wondering if there could be some compatibility issues between windows and ASUS? I don't know about coding or anything but it almost seems like one driver doesn't like another. I've tried older versions of drivers on my cards and nothing changed btw. Any help would be great!

 

 

Quick update: I updated to 20H2 today. It seems the more speedtests I run the faster it gets... I'm f$#king perplexed.

[Applefreak]

6 minutes ago, HideandGeek said:

Hello guys. I've been scratching my head for a few days on this. I have a pretty beefy computer (i9 9900k, 2070Super, z390 Pro Wifi, m.2's, and 16GB RAM) built in the middle of 2019. I've not really paid attention to my internet speeds until recently when I noticed network dropping issues. My ISP came out and swapped my modem (Spectrum ) and everything was "ok." I pay for 400 down and like 20 up. I still had some random issues on my PC so I bought a new router. My Nighthawk r7000 is like 5 years old so I got an ASUS RT-AX3000. The netgear had started giving me suspicions anyways. Well, on my netgear router I got about 115 down and 20 up over Wifi. I would get full speeds hardwired to the router AND to the modem. On the new router I get about 75 down and 5 up. Over the last couple days and a windows update to 20H2 I started getting about 12 up. I created a linux boot drive and over WIFI I get full speeds. 450 down and 22 up. I can boot back into windows and it's bottomed out. It's only on this PC that I'm having issues. Microsoft support is useless. I can hardwire to my modem and get great speeds. I'm kinda wondering if there could be some compatibility issues between windows and ASUS? I don't know about coding or anything but it almost seems like one driver doesn't like another. I've tried older versions of drivers on my cards and nothing changed btw. Any help would be great!

Did you install the wifi drivers directly from Intel's website? Make sure you do. After installing and rebooting go into windows device manager, right click on the wifi card and you should have advanced options. Now I can't tell you what to set, I don't use wifi cards from Intel, only ethernet ones. But look for packet size and max that out and check for signal strength stuff. You probably can find explanations about it on the internet. Pretty sure it is only a driver thing on your computer. Btw. is there a specific reason you are on wifi instead of ethernet?

[HideandGeek]

5 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

Did you install the wifi drivers directly from Intel's website? Make sure you do. After installing and rebooting go into windows device manager, right click on the wifi card and you should have advanced options. Now I can't tell you what to set, I don't use wifi cards from Intel, only ethernet ones. But look for packet size and max that out and check for signal strength stuff. You probably can find explanations about it on the internet. Pretty sure it is only a driver thing on your computer. Btw. is there a specific reason you are on wifi instead of ethernet?

I haven't wired my house for ethernet yet. I have a bunch of devices. I plan on it. In this case hard wiring didn't help either. But, the weirdest thing just happened. I've been running speed test after speed test and since last night my upload speeds would increase by about 1Mb each time. I just ran 5 back to back and I increased from 16-22 incrementally. Now I'm pulling full Up and Down over wifi. Like draino through a pipe. That makes absolutely no sense to me. 

 

But yes I updated all drivers directly from their website. I even check Gigabyte for MOBO updates and such. It's a gigabit wireless card. I haven't had connection issues or anything since I built it. I think there was a bug in a Windows update.

[Applefreak]

1 minute ago, HideandGeek said:

I haven't wired my house for ethernet yet. I have a bunch of devices. I plan on it. In this case hard wiring didn't help either. But, the weirdest thing just happened. I've been running speed test after speed test and since last night my upload speeds would increase by about 1Mb each time. I just ran 5 back to back and I increased from 16-22 incrementally. Now I'm pulling full Up and Down over wifi. Like draino through a pipe. That makes absolutely no sense to me. 

 

But yes I updated all drivers directly from their website. I even check Gigabyte for MOBO updates and such. It's a gigabit wireless card. I haven't had connection issues or anything since I built it. I think there was a bug in a Windows update.

That could always be the case. 

[StDragon]

Are you sure you're connecting at 5Ghz and not 2.4?

 

I usually create two seperate SSIDs with each one specific to the band. For example:

 

2.4Ghz SSID: MyWiFi 

5Ghz SSID: MyWiFi-5G

 

Otherwise if the SSID is the same for both, your adapter will choose the band it thinks is the most reliable. And that behavior depends on the driver; hence why it might work better under Linux than Windows.

[HideandGeek]

1 minute ago, StDragon said:

Are you sure you're connecting at 5Ghz and not 2.4?

 

I usually create two seperate SSIDs with each one specific to the band. For example:

 

2.4Ghz SSID: MyWiFi 

5Ghz SSID: MyWiFi-5G

 

Otherwise if the SSID is the same for both, your adapter will choose the band it thinks is the most reliable. And that behavior depends on the driver; hence why it might work better under Linux than Windows.

I considered that as well. I had even set my network card to prefer 5G. It didn't help anything. It literally just fixed itself slowly after I messed with it for days.

[HideandGeek]

I had read a bunch of forums and there are a handful of people that had a very similar issue to this one. No one had a confirmed fix but one person found that an ethernet driver from 2019 gave them better speeds than their recent ones. Dumb. I'll mark this as fixed. Thank you guys for the input.